the high fastball. His changeup is all right, and his slider is
good, but he doesn’t want to walk me. The Astros don’t like
to walk people. The bases are empty, so he’s going to chal-
lenge me with the pitch he wanted to throw the whole at bat.
“So I’m going to attack.”
Verlander throws a high fastball just inside the top
of the strike zone. Soto had told Chirinos he would hit a
home run if Verlander threw it a few inches lower than the
one he fouled back. This fastball is 3 ½ inches lower, or a
little more than the diameter of a baseball. Soto blasts it
413 feet, more than halfway up the second deck in right
field at Minute Maid Park.
The home run gives the Nationals a lead they never lose.
They win the World Series the next night with a 6–2 victory
in which Soto becomes the youngest player to reach base
three times in a World Series Game 7.
VERLANDER IS TOLD Soto knew what was coming
based on the pitcher’s extremely brief physical reaction
to Holbrook’s call on the 2-and-1 pitch.
“I did feel like it was a strike,” he says. “Borderline
pitch. Big situation. I wanted it. Didn’t get it. I definitely
don’t think I gave him anything.”
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57Verlander then is told about Soto’s old-school instincts,
how in an age when technology encroaches on how the
game is played and taught, Soto wants nothing to do
with analytics when it comes to his swing.
“I’ve been doing my routine, and it’s been great for
me the way they showed me how to hit: Just get on top
of the ball and get that backspin,” Soto says. “That’s the
way I’ve been doing it since Day 1 and I don’t want to
change it. Definitely you want to know what the pitcher
throws, but not that stuff to change my swing.”The MLB average launch angle is 12 degrees. Soto’s
launch angle is less than half of that, 5.8 degrees, which
ranks him 162nd of 176 hitters.
Verlander reconsiders what happened in the
World Series. “Maybe he did see something,” he says.
“Maybe there was something there. I don’t know what body
language I’m giving you to send something. That’s why
the best poker players in the world can pick up on tells.”
Chopin wrote more than 200 works for solo piano, but
it was one of his Études, Op. 10, No. 3, that he considered
the most beautiful melody he ever wrote.
“After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more
notes,” he once wrote, “it is simplicity that emerges as
the crowning reward of art.”
It is true for the virtuoso batsman of our time, too. Soto
may be walking in the statistical footprints of some of the
greatest hitters ever, but nothing gives him more pleasure
than hitting a baseball perfect-perfect and watching
it spin toward the wall in left center field and beyond.
“Three ninety-nine!” he yells in the batting cage in
admiration of another master stroke. “Three ninety-nine
all day long!” The simple f light of a perfectly struck
baseball is the crowning reward of his art.“HITTING IS LIKE A DANCE
or an art,” Soto says. “Every timeyou see the ball jumping off
your bat you just feel amazing.”NATIONALS TREASURE
Soto is now Washington’s
longest-tenured position player.
With his talent, popularity and
experience, he is the undisputed
face of the franchise.JUAN SOTO